“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#451

Post by dspillett » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #128

dspillett wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly as intended, by most people choosing GPL. For a small libraries like that there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use. If the larger software is so much more expansive than the little GPL covered work and so valuable, then the commercial interest presumably has the resources to either write their own or license a commercial variant. I find a lot of complaints about the GPL com…

"there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use." I feel most people don't understand that their projects are unbillable and "negotiating" is not an option. If you project is avaliable through AWS/GCP console I could "pay" at my discresion. If there was a clear price and billing details, I can email my boss and get it authorised If something needs to be negotiated, we have to get senior…

> I feel most people don't understand that their projects are unbillable and "negotiating" is not an option.

That is a valid point in some cases.

But counterwise I feel that many people on the other side of this need to accept that in many cases the creator(s) of the GPL covered code simply don't want it used that way and that is their prerogative, and they don't agree with the assessment that either they, the project, or the world at large, would be better off some other way. In those cases billable or not is a moot point, as is negotiation for that matter and you will be rebuffed (hopefully politely, there is no need to be dickish about it).

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#452

Post by throwaway984393 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #116

throwaway984393 wrote: post #61

Twitter makes for a bad blogging \ platform

Turns out that the people factor is greater than the technological factor.

QA and UX engineers know all about that... :'(

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#453

Post by athms » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

nmz wrote: post #437

athms wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Only the copyright owner can re-license. You can put modifications (that enjoy copyright protection) to BSD licensed code under the GPL or put BSD licensed code in a larger GPL code base, but you cannot re-license code covered by the BSD license.

I cannot tell if this is willfully pedantic or not. And well, since we are being pedantic, I guess I will allow myself to say, that you can't re-license per se, only newer versions can be re-licensed. a prior release will forever be that license. Now, with that said, modifications made to a GPL codebase, when published must be under the GPL. This is where the virality or copyleft come in. This in turn means that a GP…

>...I guess I will allow myself to say, that you can't re-license per se, only newer versions can be re-licensed. a prior release will forever be that license.

Wrong. Why does the GPL crowd continue to believe they can re-license copyrighted works they don't own? Only the copyright owner has the right to re-license. The GPL does NOT give permission to re-license.

The below copyright notice is displayed in ET:Legacy source files and id Software (or a superseding entity) will hold that copyright until it expires a little over a hundred years from now.

  Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory GPL Source Code
  * Copyright (C) 1999-2010 id Software LLC, a ZeniMax Media company.

>This in turn means that a GPL codebase cannot be anything but GPL.

Wrong again. A project released under the GPL can include permissively licensed code such as BSD, MIT, or ISC. The FSF lists licenses which are compatible with the GPL. What you cannot do is change the license on that permissive code to GPL.

>because if its a direct modification, then that should be GPL as well.

It can, but nothing compels it because the original is under the another license. Also, not all modifications meet the standard to be covered by copyright; the modification must be significantly expressive.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#454

Post by juped » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #268

juped wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this does not in any way prevent commercial use

Really? So if I want to include BSD code without attributing in my commercial software, I can distribute the binary? That’s rhetorical. I can’t do so legally without receiving a different license for the copyrighted code. The counter example to what you claim is trivial to construct.

how does commercial use require you to delete the license text?

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#455

Post by alex_smart » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

marcodiego wrote: post #436

alex_smart wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just an argument for features/the quality of code, not about freedom. There are other models for make good quality software that has the features users want without making it open source. And no, having the source available for software that you use is not like freedom of speech. Anyway, like I have already said, my intent here was only to try to make people like you see another perspective (namely that non-f…

I understand what you mean and I feel sorry for taking the discussion in an unintended direction. I could counter arguments some points you show, but I don't think that would contribute anything to the discussion. Apart from that, It is clear from my comment history that I do have a side. Nevertheless, calling me an "open source fanatic" is kind of rude.

You're right, I'm sorry. That was uncalled for.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#456

Post by nopzor » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

javagram wrote: post #261

glogla wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmack has net worth of $50 million. Him saying "exploitation by big tech is not a problem, really" is very different than normal person saying it - his well being is not on the line and never will be. Go ask authors of ElasticSearch or Airflow or whatever the new thing that AWS steals will be.

ElasticSearch was GPL (AGPL). It didn’t help them because what their business model needed was not just sharing back changes to source code but to actually disincentivize competition in the space of providing cloud SaaS for the product. Hence why they and mongodb switched to a shared source license that is not Free software.

elasticsearch wasn't ever GPL or AGPL to my knowledge. it was Apache licensed, and then they switched to SSPL.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#457

Post by 0dayz » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 5:52 AM UTC

hankman86 wrote: post #154

0dayz wrote: post #150

I think that the issue at hand is that there is no middle ground license that is made for the community and for businesses in mind and instead its either one extreme or the other. Also its really annoying people say gpl is some anti corporation license or a license for the community, since Stallman has been explicitly clear its about giving "freedom" to the end user

Actually there is. The LGPL is sort of a middle ground. It still requires you to share changes that you may make to some library. But it won’t easily infect the rest of your stack, so it’s basically the GPL with the viral bits removed.

Sure, but that's for libs, not your all-in-one project.

I've heard Mozilla license is the compromise but I've got no idea.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#458

Post by javagram » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

nopzor wrote: post #456

javagram wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ElasticSearch was GPL (AGPL). It didn’t help them because what their business model needed was not just sharing back changes to source code but to actually disincentivize competition in the space of providing cloud SaaS for the product. Hence why they and mongodb switched to a shared source license that is not Free software.

elasticsearch wasn't ever GPL or AGPL to my knowledge. it was Apache licensed, and then they switched to SSPL.

Yes, sorry I confused it with mongodb.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#459

Post by dman » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

reidrac wrote: post #53

dman wrote: post #3

This headline is a bit sensationalist. His tweet at the end says - "I'm still supportive of lots of GPL work, but I don't think the restrictions helped in this particular case." He also says - "but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns". It appears that the goal John was shooting for was to have as broad an impact by having the code being reused in as many situations as pos…

I think you're right; this is more about choosing the right license to support your means than a general BSD vs GPL. I find interesting his point of view compared to his partners': he would have preferred if the code was used by more people, his partners were more worried perhaps about competition (if anyone released a game based on their code, they had to contribute the changes back; which is something id could use…

My read is very close to yours.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#460

Post by emaste » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

bcrl wrote: post #381

epaga wrote: post #48

I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…

There is an example of 2 projects that started around the same time, one of which used the GPL and one of which used the BSD license. Almost 30 years after the projects started, the one one using the GPL is vibrate and healthy, while the other project using the BSD license has trouble getting companies to contribute their changes back and barely has enough developers participating in the community to survive. This is…

This is quite far off the mark.

Many companies using FreeBSD, including Juniper, NetApp, Netflix, Netgate (pfSense), iXsystems (TrueNAS), Dell (Isilon) contribute significant code to FreeBSD. It's very expensive to maintain long-lived changes from upstream, so there's a large incentive not to do so. Code that's "not contributed back" is largely code that isn't suitable for upstream anyhow - because it is incomplete, limited in scope, etc.

Looking at "Sponsored by" tags on the last 6 months of commits to FreeBSD I see the following:

  The FreeBSD Foundation
  Netflix
  Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate")
  Chelsio Communications
  NetApp, Inc.
  Mellanox Technologies // NVIDIA Networking
  Innovate UK
  Klara, Inc.
  Diablotin Systems
  Dell EMC Isilon
  iXsystems, Inc.
  Citrix Systems R&D
  Axcient
  Netflix, Inc.
  DARPA
  Alstom Group
  Eldorado Research Institute (eldorado.org.br)
  Ampere Computing
  Marvell
  Stormshield
  Amazon, Inc.

(and a long list of entries with one or two commits each)

There's a backlog of work that contributors would like to get into FreeBSD; a limiting factor is availability of mentor and reviewer time to guide contributors through the process and iterating on bringing the code into a committable state.